Open Historic Registers

The registers used to be open to public inspection. From the start of civil registration the public could carry out searches in the registers of birth, marriage and death. In 1898 the then Registrar General took it upon himself to close the records held at the GRO even though there was no change in the law to allow for such unilateral action.
Similarly in 1974 many local registrars closed the registers they held to public searches even though a public search of the registers was written in to the various applicable Acts of Parliament.
Today’s technology available allows the registers to be digitized and made available as facsimile copies protecting the original from damage

Commercial concerns are willing to scan the registers and make them available online under licence at no cost to the public purse
A new accurate index of BMDs could be compiled by volunteers thereby complying with the 1836 legislation for the first time in 177 years.

The benefits include taking pressure off Superintendent Registrars and the GRO enabling them to concentrate on the core task of recording & administering current registrations.

Revenue would be created for the County Record Offices or the National Archives swelling the government coffers.
All at no cost to the taxpayer or government.

A Royal Commission on Public Records in 1914 agreed
“that it was the evident intention of the originating legislation in 1836 that the registers should be open”.

The Royal Commission also stated
“We see no good reason in principle for forbidding searchers to take copies at their own risk. The existing restriction rests merely of financial grounds and we think that it should be removed.”

Master Arthur Francis Ridsdale, who served in the Chancery Division of the High Court from 1912 until his death in 1935 stated in evidence to the Royal Commission
“What one feels is that very often great injustice might be caused simply from parties not being able to get information which is in the registers and could be found if the solicitor could see them”.

Sir Frederick Kenyon, the Director and Principal Librarian of the British Museum remarked
“The closing of the registers is calculated to defeat the cause of justice.”

In 1992 a White Paper titled Civil Registration: Vital Change, Birth, Marriage Death Registration in the 21st Century was published.
Section 6.6. of that White paper states-
“The Government has concluded that historic records should be defined as those relating to people born over 100 years ago and that these should be made fully available to the public.”

No Act of Parliament prohibits any registrar, superintendent registrar or the registrar general from granting the public access to any register.

No Act of Parliament prohibits Civil Registers being lodged at the National Archives .

The current government is pledged to support open data, they pledge to introduce the right to public data in legislation to make sure that all the government data that can be published, is published in an accessible format.

We ask the government to make good on that pledge and release this historic data to public access.